genSalience: genSalience

In robiRagan/voteR: Spatial Voting Models in R

Description

Randomly generate a vector of salience weights for each policy dimension for a set of voters.

Usage

genSalience(
  numVotersGenSalience,
  numDimsGenSalience,
  salienceHeterogeneityGenSalience = 1,
  maxRelativeSalienceGenSalience = 2
)

Arguments

numVotersGenSalience	scalar Number of voters
numDimsGenSalience	scalar Number of policy dimensions. Can be 1 or 2. If this is set to 1, then the salience of that one dimension will be 1 for all voters.
salienceHeterogeneityGenSalience	scalar [0,1] The probability that any given dimension will also have a salience of 1 for a voter. If this is set to 1 then all dimensions will have the same salience.
maxRelativeSalienceGenSalience	scalar The maximum relative salience for a dimension you want to allow your voters to have.

Details

This function used in conjunction with genVoters to randomly generate a set of voters based on a set of user provided parameters. This function randomly generates a vector of salience weights for each policy dimension for a set of voters. For each voter, it randomly sets one dimension as the numeriare dimension with a salience of 1. The salience of the other dimension is set stocasticly based on the parameters salienceHeterogeneityGenSalience and maxRelativeSalienceGenSalience. salienceHeterogeneityGenSalience allows a user can decide how much heterogeneity of salience they want to allow their set of voters to have. maxRelativeSalienceGenSalience allows a user to set a bounds on the maximum sailence that can be for their generated voters. You are not required to use this function to provide the voter's saliences. You may simply provide a numberOfVoters x numberOfDimensions matrix to setVoters

Value

outSalience numVoters x numDimensions matrix of salience weights. For one voter/row, each element of the vector represents the *relative* saliance of each dimension for a voter. The dimension with the lowest salience serves as the "numeraire" dimension and should recieve a salience of 1. All the other saliences are expressed in units of this "numeraire". So if a dimension is twice as important to a voter as the numeraire dimension it recieves a salience of 2. Example: 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 1 4 1 For voter two (second row) the salience of dimension one (first column) is the numeraire. For this voter dimension two is twice as salient as dimension one.

robiRagan/voteR documentation built on Feb. 27, 2020, 6:48 p.m.